


it's not somebody who's seen the light

by pan_ismyhomeboy



Series: Hallelujah [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, D/s elements, Dehumanization, Identity Issues, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Rough Sex, Winter Soldier as an alternate personality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 13:56:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1472353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pan_ismyhomeboy/pseuds/pan_ismyhomeboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier doesn't like having this Bucky guy in his head.</p><p>Spoilers for Cap 2. Companion piece to "it's not a cry you can hear at night," but readable on its own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's not somebody who's seen the light

He thinks they used to be in love. 

Not, of course, that the Winter Soldier is particularly adept at processing and cataloging emotions (least of all his own, least of all those that don’t amount to fear of pain and relief at its absence, least of all the nameless broken longing he’d learned to live with as easily as his metallic arm or his handlers’ commands). 

Not that Bucky has or, perhaps will ever, recovered enough memories to parse the expressions and body language that _should_ leave the captain as easily read as any book.  

Not that either of them are used yet to the other, however ‘either of them’ gets defined  — not the captain and his prodigal sergeant, and certainly not the Winter Soldier and this strange new-old presence in his mind that wants to call himself, _all_ of himself, James Buchanan Barnes.  

(If the Winter Soldier had been asked for his opinion  — which, of course, is not something that has ever occurred, even twelve weeks four days seven hours twenty four minutes past the time he _should_ have checked in with his handlers, or at least attempted to determine if any were still alive  — then he would have said he prefers James to Bucky because one of those is merely a label, a name of circumstance on a birth certificate somewhere. He does not want to be called, by himself least of all, a name that fell from the captain’s lips like a prayer. But this Bucky does not ask his opinion and the Winter Soldier finds himself losing time and identity and purpose yet again. He has never had a handler inside his own head before. He doesn’t like it.) 

The Winter Soldier is a creature of habit first, last, and always, running on programmed instinct and relying on reflexes embedded again and again over decades of conditioning. He is efficient but not creative, watchful without always comprehending. Conclusions of his own come at a gut level, followed by immediate action and without further questions. The Winter Soldier does not ask because he does not need to know, is never caught off guard, is not _interested_ in things that don’t make sense. If something has no meaning then it is outside the parameters of his mission and that is literally the end of that.  

But the man on the bridge had known him.

_Bucky?_

The presence in his mind, the one that had always fit around him so snugly he hadn’t even realized it was there, woke up for the first time in seventy years. 

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

The Winter Soldier said those words but Bucky was the one looking through their eyes and that was the moment he came to the abrupt and terrifying realization he was not, and had never been, alone. 

(They wiped him later that day and deleted the surge of memories beginning to press at the backs of his eyes, threatening to erupt from his own skin, and though _both_ of them screamed the Winter Soldier imagined holding the other one beneath the water to drown, shooting a perfect ten over and over until red swept across his vision and finally, blessedly, all fell silent.) 

But first and foremost this is a tale about love, the kind that burrows marrow-deep and consumes everything in its path, and no matter how many times the Winter Soldier tries to kill Bucky he can never erase the knowledge that his brainspace is a duplex  — always has been, always will be  — or the bolt of understanding that this person, this _part_ of him-that-is-them, knows the man on the bridge, cares for him, died for him. HYDRA had not given him a schema for these feelings and so they devour him from the inside out, a writhing and violent mess of underdeveloped larvae that know nothing but to eat and to take and cannot fathom what it is to dream of the sky.

He had never been aware enough or human enough to worry about losing his sanity. Now it is all he can think about in the early days of his freedom, awake for more consecutive hours than he can ever remember, almost missing the throb of ice that once lulled him to sleep. The Winter Soldier has been alone as long as he can remember and now he isn’t. It is another man’s memories and life just out of reach, playing over and over in the recesses of his dreams, and it isn’t _fair_. He has never thought about fairness or justice before the man on the bridge but now it is all he can think about. They must be synonyms for love, he decides late one night as he fails at sleeping beneath an overpass, because every time he thinks about what’s _right_ (trying to tease meaning out of the concept, uncertain as a child taking its first tumble down the stairs) he thinks about the captain and every time he thinks about the captain he feels an inexplicable rush of joy and grief and hatred and longing. Neither of them remember much, but the Winter Soldier is certain he should not feel this way toward his mission and Bucky is certain he shouldn’t want to kill Steve and between the two of them there is an incomprehensible and unbreachable gulf.

He feeds his body and sleeps when he can, steals clothes and breaks into abandoned apartments and tends to his wounds, every moment spent feeling his brain split apart from the inside out.

He stays away as long as he can, but in the end it never was his choice. 

.

A memory that is not his:

_Steve is beautiful and Bucky is afraid, afraid that this boy once so easily broken and bruised had become a man, more than a man, vaulting far beyond his grasp. Steve is there and Bucky is no longer afraid of dying, disbelieving of the transformation before his eyes. Steve is smiling and Bucky kisses him in the last private moment they ever have together, a shy, soft touch. Bucky is not used to being tentative and he is not used to being unsure. He thinks even if this is the worst decision he ever makes, even if this ruins their friendship and camaraderie, it will have been worth it to know the shape of his lips and the taste of his tongue._

_Steve does not push him away._

.

The captain’s body is hard and hot beneath his touch and the other man doesn’t flinch when the metal hand slides against his skin. There is the faintest sense of pressure but no true nerve endings, nothing that even remotely emulates the hand made from flesh and blood. _That_ hand becomes Bucky’s, cupping the captain’s face and sliding fingers between his lips while _his_ hand, the Winter Soldier’s hand, curls around both wrists and painfully pins them above their heads. In this moment he is both and he is neither and the captain with the unfamiliar face he nevertheless loves names him, syllables wet and muffled around his knuckles.

“I’m not him,” the Winter Soldier mutters, only that must not be true because when the captain’s face falls he is able to immediately identify it as heartbreak. “I’m not,” he insists even as he leans in to take his lips with his own (too rough too bruising too angry to ever be a kiss). His free hand, now slick with the other man’s spit, reaches down between their bodies and circles the captain’s

_fumbling in the dark quiet don’t let anyone else hear the first last and only encounter, whispered promises Bucky doesn’t think he’ll ever keep but it’s nice of him to say Steve gasping fingers exploring never like this with a girl never like this with anyone never could be only one person for him and he’s ruined for life, they’re both fucking ruined and they’re both fucking and_

cock, slick fingers sliding over the head and coaxing out a moan. Moans have only ever been from pain and terror, from bullet holes bleeding out onto concrete, but maybe this is just another way to inflict pain, too. Besides, there is fear in the captain’s eyes and _that_ he can recognize all on his own, alternate parasitic personality or not feeding information straight into his brain.  

“You _are_ ,” the captain gasps, straining against the metal grip and there will be a ring of bruises the next morning.

The Winter Soldier shakes his head because until the moment on the bridge he’d never had any use for a name. But Bucky knows what it’s like to not be alone and Bucky aches for this man without any reservation and Bucky is the one who kisses his jaw and murmurs, _“Steve.”_

After that, things get a bit fuzzy.

He will remember later, when Bucky has receded once again into a dusty corner of his mind, of sinking to his knees and blowing the other man against the wall. He examines this memory like he does all the others, though this one is sharp and brittle in its newness, the last sheen of spring frost clinging stubbornly to a pond’s surface. It is no good to anyone: too thin to bear weight, too weak to survive even a cursory glance of the sun, melting in his hands the moment he reaches out to touch. He does not remember what happened next, does not remember leaving and arriving here and bathing in the lukewarm shower of a downtrodden motel, because even though now this is his body these are still not his memories.

Bucky loves the captain, cherishes him, desires him. The devotion rips through the Winter Soldier’s heart and threatens to set every last inch of him ablaze. _My mission, my mission_ comes the familiar chant, once so soothing and now turned on its head. His legs buckle and he grasps blindly at the other presence in his head, for the first time desperate for Bucky’s perspective. But Bucky is silent and the Winter Soldier doesn’t know what to _do_ with this ugly scar of humanity blossoming across his chest. _Remember the mission_ he doesn’t have a mission anymore hasn’t for months _remember the mission_ back against the door and gun in his lap _remember the mission_ he’s shaking so hard and his breath comes in short bursts _remember the_ way the cuffs slid over his arms and the makeshift mouthguard sat heavy between his teeth and the familiar-not-familiar buzz of the machine filled his ears and the pain ricocheted off every nerve and the blinding light flooding every single fucking synapse, remember the way he  —

He forgot to eat today and so does not vomit, instead curling tightly around his gun like a talisman before collapsing to the floor with a wordless cry. His stomach heaves and the room spins and again, he reaches out for the other part of him holed up somewhere in his head. “Bucky,” he rasps, but there is only the same silence there always was when the world hadn’t stopped making sense.

Being alone has never scared him before.

. 

The blackouts happen more and more frequently, though they comfort him in their familiarity. He is not used to unbroken consciousness even with the inevitable interruption of sleep, not used to any sense of continuity to his life at all. He is awake and then he is not and then he is awake again, but only a small amount of time has passed and he is at least somewhat close to his last location without the chilly fugue of cryo nipping at his heels. The first time he wakes up in an exhibit hall, frowning at the picture of a man wearing his face. _Bucky_ part of the caption reads, and he thinks, _of course it is_. He catches echoes of the man in his own skin, a swirl of emotions in his chest that aren’t his but he gets to experience anyway. Confusion he can understand and even share; on that at least they are united. Sadness, regret, pain, loss  — he recognizes those as well. Perhaps Bucky is not as alien a presence as he first thought. 

More interesting to the Winter Soldier are the pictures of the captain because here are the emotions he barely has words for. _Love_ , only  —  only that is such a _small_ word for so large a feeling. His brow furrows as he searches a vocabulary list that, like his memory bank, seems so much larger than it once was. Friendship, lust, admiration, affection. Nothing fits. The words are barely more than meaningless descriptors, nuanced beyond helpfulness.  

He closes his eyes and remembers grasping the captain’s wrists above his head; though the captain could have easily pushed him away, he did not. He remembers sinking to his knees and looking up through half-lidded eyes at a man who shone like the sun before leaning in to give proper worship; though he could have killed the captain where he stood, he did not. 

Devotion. Submission. Obsession.

These are the things he understands. This is what he was created to do, who he was created to be. The captain is no longer his mission, but perhaps…

Something relaxes in his chest and the Winter Soldier, perhaps for the first time, feels the corner of his mouth curl into a smile. 


End file.
